9. Jolly Kingdom, Printers

BOB SKELLINGTON’S REMAINS - Part 9

“It’s not so far to Swanspottle,” murmured Sheila as she drove along the road out of Brumpton, “me and my fella come this way quite often. It’s sort of calming and the pub’s good.”

“Wait till you have to confront a geriatric woman with magic in her finger-tips ruling the roost in her front yard,” warned Rosie, “and try to keep as far away from her place as you can.”

“I would if I knew who you meant and where her place might be,” replied Sheila.

As Sheila had claimed, Swanspottle was a typical Middleshire village just a few miles from Brumpton and they were soon edging into its summery picturesque outskirts, with large houses that reeked of money behind tall hedges or with blooming gardens on full view.

Following the directions on her satnav, Sheila drove carefully down a minor road and towards a less salubrious quarter where the houses were meaner and clustered in terraced rows. Half way down one cul-de-sac was the place they were looking for. It was advertised as Jolly Kingdom, Printers and looked what it was: a small business on the brink of vanishing the next time there was an economic downturn.

“Not so posh,” grunted Rosie, “come on, let’s see if the owner can remember printing written by our Bob Skellington.”

Mr Kingdom wasn’t exactly what they were expecting. He was cheerful of African descent and would have looked more at home behind a salsa bar shaking cocktails and laughing with the crowds.

“Ah, that weirdo,” he said in a very local accent, “It must have been thirty years ago but I remember him like it was yesterday. It’s a strange tale as you might imagine, if you’ve got time to hear the details.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Rosie told him, “we know where he is now, but we need to fill in a few gaps.”

“Well, as I said it was roughly thirty years ago and I was feeding my cats. I had cats back then, three of them, because my old lady loved ‘em more than she loved me! When she went she took the cats with her and I guess I miss them more than I miss her. You see, she wasn’t a woman of colour and only married me because her folks said she’d better get married and give the baby a name when it came. So we married, the baby got a name and now he’s a grown man with kids of his own, and they’ve got names too!

“Anyway she’d not gone and I was for ever opening the back door for this or that cheeky cat to go out and do its business or whatever it is cats do after dark, and I saw this figure gliding towards my bit of a shed. Now, there had been tales of a wild gorilla escaped from some zoo or other, and I thought to meself, that must be it: I’ll capture it! So when it sloped into my old shed, and that shed was so old that I always feared for it when there was wind about, I ran out and shoved a bar against the door so it wouldn’t open. I used that bar instead of buying a lock and key because that bar were free and locks and keys aren’t!”

“You must have been nervous,” put in Sheila.

“Not me, little lassie! I weren’t nervous on account of there being a door between the beastie and me! But didn’t I get the shock of my life when it talked! I never knew gorillas had a talent for talk! Let me out it bellowed in what I’d call a beery voice. You know, when there’s more ale than grub in a drunkard’s belly! Anyway, I asked who it was and he said he was a leader of this or that whites first and blacks go home group, and I thought to mesen he can stay where he is then, I ain’t messing with his sort! But he pleaded with me, promised to behave, and I let him out.

“He followed me into the kitchen, tripping over one of the cats who was weaving itself between his legs, and said that he was being chased by a flock of man-sized crows! I mean, birds that big! I fought to keep a straight face, I can tell you.

“Anyway, he starts spouting this stuff about how it was time that all them black foreigners went back to where they came from, how there ain’t any room here for that sort, and he looked me straight in the face as he said that.

“When you look at me, I said to him, curious like, what do you see?

“Oh, he says, you’re a regular guy! And he looked me straight in the face when he said that, and me as black, they say, as an ace of spades! But he didn’t seem to see any colour, which sort of spooked me.

“And next day it was the same. He talked to me as if I was a whitey and asked me what I did for a living, As if the front room and its Victorian printing press hadn’t given him a clue, but I told him, and he said as he needed to focus his mind on the big wide world and everyone in it. He said he wanted to convert folks to his point of view and I’d given him a spanking good idea.

“What I’d like to do, he said, is write a book, but tell the opposite to what I believe in. That way folks’ll see how silly they are and join me in a great army that will set them all free! The blacks and browns‘ll all go back home and we’ll be free at last, like in the good old days!

“He was looking me straight in the face when he said that, and I swear as I’m standing here he didn’t see the colour of my face! All he could see was a bitter knot of prejudice that had twisted his stupid head and taken the place of reason! So I said to him then if he wrote the book I’d print it.

“He kissed me, actually kissed me, on the lips for saying that and ran out to my falling down shed telling me he’s got a pen and paper and he’ll write everything down. He said that and when I looked out after dark I could tell he had a candle flickering in there and guessed he was hard at work writing his crazy ideas.

“And I was as good as my word. It was only a pamphlet really and my bit of printing stuff could cope with that. So I set it up by hand and knocked off a couple of dozen copies of it, and, you know, it weren’t bad at all. But then, it were meant to be the dead opposite of what he thought, and the dead opposite of the scrambled mush in his head actually made some sense!”

“And so he said one thing and preached another?” asked Rosir.

“That’s why I remember him so vividly,” admitted Jolly Kingdom, “that and the way he was so totally colour-blind! I tell you what: have a copy of his little book. He never paid for them and never came back for them. In fact, I’ve not seen him since, the scallywag!”

“He’s a dead scallywyg” Rosie told him, “very dead and reduced to old weathered bones, I’m afraid. Thanks for his booklet. Can I pay you for it?”

“Dead, you say?” Jolly shook his head sadly, “I rather suspected he might be. Read that booklet, miss, and you might actually get some idea of what he didn’t think! You’d think he was a socialist but he wasn’t one of those. Not at all. The bloke I met was a colour blind racist bigot!”

© Peter Rogerson, 08.02.21